Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Fear the Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Michael_Pento
While officials from the Federal Reserve gather recently in Jackson Hole Wyoming to bemoan that inflation isn’t yet high enough for their liking, the truth is that inflation is already ravaging the middle class.
To prove my point, the government’s official reading on core CPI inflation (one of the Fed’s preferred metrics that removes food and energy prices) increased just 1.7% from July 2012. So, in the mind of those who control the value of our currency, inflation is well below their target of 2%; and therefore needs to be increased.
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Wednesday, September 04, 2013
The Three Types of Economic Austerity / Economics / Economic Austerity
By: MISES
Frank Hollenbeck writes: Reading the financial press, one gets the impression there are only two sides to the austerity debate: pro-austerity and anti-austerity. In reality, we have three forms of austerity. There is the Keynesian-Krugman-Robert Reich form which promotes more government spending and higher taxes. There is the Angela Merkel form of less government spending and higher taxes, and there is the Austrian form of less spending and lower taxes. Of the three forms of austerity, only the third increases the size of the private sector relative to the public sector, frees up resources for private investment, and has actual evidence of success in boosting growth.
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
How Fed Policy Has Devastated Three Generations of Retirees / Economics / Demographics
By: John_Mauldin
Retirement can be an unpleasant prospect if you’re not ready for it. This week’s Outside the Box is in in-depth report on Americans' retirement prospects, which comes to us from Dennis Miller, a columnist for CBS Market Watch, and editor of Miller’s Money Forever. It's not just the Boomers who are trying (often in vain) to retire this decade; it's also Gen-Xers, who are the most indebted generation (and the one that saw their assets depreciate the most in the Great Recession). The Millennials haven't been spared, either; in fact, over time they may be the hardest-hit, since near-zero interest rates are keeping them from compounding their savings in the early years of their careers, when the power of compounding is greatest. In addition, the difficult post-college job market and sky-high levels of student loans have kept most Millennials out of the stock market, and they are far less likely than previous generations t o open a retirement savings account.
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
3 Ways Inflation Destroys an Economy / Economics / Inflation
By: Richard_Moyer
If Batman has the Joker, I have inflation. Inflation, my great and worthy opponent, has shown me yet another side of his wicked, wealth-destroying ways. Let's have a look.
Sunday, September 01, 2013
Savings Glut vs. Low Interest Rates / Economics / Economic Theory
By: David_Howden
Five years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, economists are still starkly divided as to its causes. Perhaps this is not too surprising as we are now more than 80 years past the Great Depression with little end in sight to the debate surrounding the causes of that downturn.
Most economists fall into one of two camps when explaining where the imbalances originated that led up to the current crisis. Austrian School economists are in the unique position of being able to reconcile these two camps, even while favoring the first explanation to the second.
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Thursday, August 29, 2013
Asia Growth Illusion, Why China May Not Be The Odd One Out? / Economics / Asian Economies
By: DK_Matai
Which are the world's worst performing currencies over six months losing between 20+% to 8+% against the US dollar? 1. Indian Rupee; 2. Brazilian Real; 3. South African Rand; 4. Indonesian Rupiah; 5. Turkish Lira; and 6. Russian Rouble -- in that order. So whose left amongst the 'Emerging Market' majors including the BRIC nations save China? How long before the Chinese fortune cookie crumbles given a multi-trillion dollar black hole of local government debt which nobody really wants to talk about?
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Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Global Economy Suffers From Hypothermia / Economics / Global Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
We've used the analogy before, in particular to describe what happened to the Roman Empire during the latter days of its existence. Looking around various economies in the world today, the same analogy once again comes to mind. One might say that what we see these days is analogous to the more advanced stages of hypothermia.
Early hypothermia may show in nothing more than cold feet, in itself an amusing analogy perhaps. But a body that is exposed to extreme cold over longer periods of time will at some point start to exhibit symptoms such as frostbite, which are the result of the core of the body trying to save itself at the cost of the periphery, the extremities. Typically, a human body, for instance, will lose its toes first because the heart can no longer pump enough blood (heat) to them and at the same time keep the body's core above a minimum temperature.
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Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Greece Highlights Germany's EU Dilemma / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Browne
On August 11th, German media got hold of and published an internal Bundesbank report which maintained that Greece would likely need further relaxation of the terms of its rescue bailouts. The report contained revelations that could be deeply embarrassing to the government of Angela Merkel that has maintained forcefully that German taxpayers would face no further commitments. The revelations could potentially be a potent weapon for her political opposition in the upcoming election. More broadly, the revelations reveal a wide gap between economic reality and the sunny face of EU optimism.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Debt, Inflation and Economy - Trying To Stay Sane In An Insane World / Economics / Economic Theory
By: James_Quinn
In Part 1 of this article I documented the insane remedies prescribed by the mad banker scientists presiding over this preposterous fiat experiment since they blew up the lab in 2008. In Part 2 I tried to articulate why the country has allowed itself to be brought to the brink of catastrophe. There is no turning back time. The choices we've made and avoided making over the last one hundred years are going to come home to roost over the next fifteen years. We are in the midst of a great Crisis that will not be resolved until the mid-2020s. The propagandists supporting the vested interests continue to assure the voluntarily oblivious populace the economy is improving, jobs are plentiful, inflation is under control, and housing is recovering. Bernanke and his band of merry money manipulators, Obama and his gaggle of government apparatchiks, and their mendacious mainstream media mouthpieces have enacted radical measures in the last five years that reek of desperation in their effort to give the appearance of revival to a failing economic system. Stimulating the net worth of bankers and connected corporate cronies through engineered stock market gains has not trickled down to the peasants. Our owners try to convince us it's raining, but we know they're pissing down our backs. Our Crisis mood is congealing.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Bankrupting France, On the Edge of Euro-zone Periphery / Economics / France
By: John_Mauldin
"The emotional side of me tends to imagine France, like the princess in the fairy stories or the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny. Instinctively I have the feeling that Providence has created her either for complete successes or for exemplary misfortunes. Our country, as it is, surrounded by the others as they are, must aim high and hold itself straight, on pain of mortal danger. In short, to my mind, France cannot be France without greatness. – Charles de Gaulle, from his memoirs
Friday, August 23, 2013
This is What the Fed’s QE Has Done for Our Economy / Economics / US Economy
By: Money_Morning
Tara Clarke writes: The Fed's QE (quantitative easing) program has created multiple trillions of dollars since it first started in 2008.
But now there are signs the QE policy will finally come to a close.
On June 19, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced the Fed may start to taper its QE by the end of the year if it met an unemployment target of 7%, while keeping a targeted inflation rate at 2%.
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Thursday, August 22, 2013
Africa: The Next Major Boom-Bust Cycle? / Economics / Africa
By: MISES
Chris Becker writes: As Western economies start to regress in earnest following decades of failed and destructive monetary inflation and debt accumulation, yield-starved investors are allocating real capital to the one industrially untapped continent in the world: Africa. However, we’re not seeing industry moving to Africa to set up shop. Rather, politically-directed capital flowing into the African resources sector is fueling and financing the strongest consumer boom in the world. It’s a vendor financing model for Asia, and it portends a major boom and bust cycle for the African continental economy.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
China's Unprecedented Demographic Time Bomb Problem Takes Shape / Economics / Demographics
By: STRATFOR
Chinese society is on the verge of a structural transformation even more profound than the long and painful project of economic rebalancing, which the Communist Party is anxiously beginning to undertake. China's population is aging more rapidly than it is getting rich, giving rise to a great demographic imbalance with important implications for the Party's efforts to transform the Chinese economy and preserve its own power in the coming decade.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Inflation - Deflation Confusion, Financial Reality Hidden By Commonly Used Theory and Jargon / Economics / Inflation
By: Dan_Amerman
As we will explore in this analysis, when we look at two of the largest sources of net worth in the United States – housing and stocks – then what history shows us is that for 22 out of the 40 years between 1972 and 2012, much of the truth about financial performance has been almost invisible to people who have been relying on the most commonly used definitions for inflation and deflation.
That is, most people phrase the question as being one of either a) inflation, or b) deflation, meaning it has to be one or the other and obviously can't be both together. As we will explore using simple to follow, round number examples, taking this seemingly common sense approach leaves us unable to distinguish between a 20% gain, a 20% loss and a 94% loss.
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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Indian Rupee 20% Crash, Another 1997 Asian Financial Crisis? / Economics / Asian Economies
By: Sam_Chee_Kong
I don't know whether you recalled how the last Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-98 affected us all. Our stock market dropped from 1385 to 295 points while our ringgit went down to as low as RM4.80 to the dollar. At the height of the crisis our interest rates went up to as high as 18%. After a break of 15 years are we going to see the same scenario again? I do not know the answer but one thing for sure is that it does have some resemblances such as depreciating currencies and interest rates hike across the region. The last time the Financial Crisis was started in Thailand and this time I reckon it will be in India.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Doing Business, Singapore Style / Economics / Asian Economies
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Since 2004, the World Bank has produced the annual Doing Business report, which ranks countries on ten factors reflecting the ease with which entrepreneurs and businesses may conduct economic activity in a given country.
At first glance, such a survey would hardly seem controversial. After all, with so much unreliable data coming out of official government statistics offices these days, one would think that an unbiased system for ranking the ease of doing business would be a useful tool — not only for businesses, but for governments as well. Indeed, since 2005, a total of 1,940 reforms have been implemented by countries to improve their rankings. And, several prominent heads of state, such as Russia’s Valdimir Putin have made public pledges to improve their countries’ Doing Business rankings.
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Tuesday, August 20, 2013
The GDP Economic Growth Distractor / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Peter_Schiff
Albert Einstein, a man who knew a thing or two about celestial mechanics, supposedly once called compound interest "the most powerful force in the universe." While the remark was likely meant to be funny (astrophysicists can be hilarious), it sheds light on the often overlooked fact that small changes, over time, can yield enormous results. Over eons, small creeks can carve large canyons through solid rock. The same phenomenon may be at work in our economy. A minor, but persistent under bias in the inflation gauge used in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may have created a wildly distorted picture of our economic health.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Russian Economy to Fall into Abyss? / Economics / Russia
By: Pravda
Experts are debating whether Russia's economy has slipped into a recession or whether it is "safely" stagnant. The difference between stagnation and recession is of insignificant technical nature. However, the dispute over the terminology also has a political dimension, and for that reason it was joined but such heavyweights as Alexei Ulyukayev, the Economic Development Minister, who argues that the economy is stagnating.
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Saturday, August 17, 2013
China's Fraudulent Inflation and GDP Economic Data / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Mike_Shedlock
It's easy to make a case that GDP data everywhere is fraudulent because of the definition which includes government deficit spending, regardless of how ridiculous or useless the spending is. However, China takes the distortions to a level well beyond other countries.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
U.S. Economy Set to Continue Grinding Higher / Economics / US Economy
By: DailyWealth
Dr. David Eifrig writes: For the past year, I've been carefully watching for signs of trouble...
The two biggest potential sources of trouble – the two big concerns I hear from investors – are: